Week Six GL 350

“I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.” – New Missal Translation of the Nicene Creed

The Catholic Church is Roman. After all, many English-speaking Catholics tend to refer to it as the “Roman Catholic Church,” so it must be Roman, right? In the way that most complicated questions wind up being answered: yes and no. Allow me to explain this ambiguity. Technically speaking, no, the Catholic Church is not specifically Roman. The truth behind the term, “Roman Catholic Church” is that it was an adopted term that is now used interchangeably with the Catholic Church by many believers. The Church itself however, does not use this term except when referring to the Diocese of Rome. Even though the Church is not specifically “Roman” in that sense, it is not hard to see the ways in which the Catholic Church is Roman, or at the very least, Italian.

As Barzini writes, “All the great Popes of the era (some were among the greatest in history) were Italian, as well as most of the famous cardinals, theologians, writers, scholars, preachers, educators, heads of religious orders, who practically constructed, within a few decades, a brand new Catholic Church.” Just as Barzini describes, the “Roman” root of the Catholic Church lies with the history of the religion itself. He later says, “The Church went about its sacred, eternal, and universal mission with Italian prudence, savoir faire, and intelligence. It was manned by Italians. It could not help embodying also some Italian ideals.” The Catholic Church is Roman in the way that its history comes from Rome and Italy. There are Catholic churches around every street corner in Rome, religious Italian artwork that was done by famous Italian artists everywhere you look. Even the Pope himself, the head of the Catholic Church, resides in Italy in the Vatican. The Church is woven into Roman history just as much as Rome is into the Church's history. While it is possible to take the Church out of Rome, as we see through the universality of Catholicism, it is nearly impossible to extricate “Rome” and the Italian flair from the Church.

Regardless of the ties to Rome, the Catholic Church is also universal. According to a statistic from LiveScience taken in 2010, there were an estimated 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide who were practicing in 157 different countries. Clearly, Catholicism is international. But while numbers and percentages do help in explaining how the Church is universal, I think the universality of Catholicism can best be described through a personal experience. When we first arrived in Rome, (almost two months ago!) we went to a Catholic mass in an Italian church and when we originally walked in and sat down, the thought had even not crossed my mind about the language in which the mass would be said. Looking back on it, I suppose it was ignorant of me not to even consider that the mass would not be in English, and much to my surprise at the time, the whole mass was in Italian. (I’m not sure why this was so surprising, after all, we were in Italy, other than the fact that we grow so accustomed to the regularity of mass and how it is at home) The only spoken words I understood were “Dio” and “amen.” The readings, the homily, and the prayers sounded like complete nonsense in my lack of knowledge of the Italian language. Strangely enough though, I understood everything that was happening at mass, maybe not the actual words being spoken, but the universal routine of a Catholic mass was unfalteringly the same. The order of events, the sitting, the standing, the kneeling, the singing, all happened at the right time, regardless of what language was being spoken. 

But maybe that wasn’t so strange after all. I understood it because it was universal, because we were all Catholic. Could we not argue that the Catholic Church is also American? Or Spanish? Or even Tanzanian for that matter? Our faith is universal in the way it is practiced. Whether mass is said in English, Spanish, Swahili, Italian, or any other language, it can be always be recognized as Catholic.

*The same can be said for the universality of the Church in a world-known place like the Vatican. Going to mass at St. Peter's was a reminder of how massive the body of Christ really is, and not only is it massive, but exceptionally diverse as well. At the Papal Audience experience, it was definitely clear that the Catholic Church was both Roman and global. While the service was initially all in Italian, (the Roman aspect), Pope Francis's greeting and address to the crowd were both translated into 10 different languages! Italian, French, English, German, Dutch, Spanish... it seemed as though the translations would never end! And what was the most amazing part of the Papal Audience was that even though there were clearly enough people to have at least 10 different languages, at the end everyone said the "Our Father" in Latin together. Our Catholic faith is truly universal.